6 Months of Selah

Selah celebrated her 1/2 birthday the other day. I'm pretty sure she didn't even know she was celebrating, but alas, it happened! She is now a 6-month old and is closer to a 1-year old than a brand-new baby. C-R-A-Z-Y.

Selah at 6-months

 It seems like just a couple of weeks ago that I posted her 5-month update, so there's not a ton new to tell. At her check-up, she weighed in at 17 lbs, 5 oz., (73%) and 27.25 in long (95%). Still a long, tall Sally! She is fitting more comfortably in 9-month clothes than in 6-month clothes, due to her long torso and long legs. She's using those long legs more and more. She LOVES to stand holding onto our legs or hands for support and she will happily bounce for as long as we let her (or as long as her stomach holds out). She does this cute little bounce when I'm carrying her over my shoulder where she uses her arms to pull up and kicks against me to go up and down and up and down and up and down. She also does the bounce when she's laying across us on her stomach. Girl likes to move, and I would not be surprised by crawling at any point.

Speaking of cute things, there are a couple of cute new developments in her repertoire. She has begun sounding out more things, usually "buh" and "mah" sounds. We're trying to teach her to say "Benny" and "Mama" when she's making those noises, but she usually just laughs at us :) Often times it results in her just blowing bubbles and spitting a lot.

Even within the last few days, she has developed a new facial expression that I LOVE. She crinkles up her nose and smiles really big with her mouth wide open. It's maybe a pantomime of our open-mouthed, eyebrows-up face we both do all the time, but Seh has picked up on it and it's so adorable. Still no teeth visible, so for now it's a lovely toothless grin.

This month has brought lots of visits to the zoo, where Selah loves to watch the tigers play, the monkeys hop around and the komodo dragon stick its tongue out. It's actually been as interesting to watch the animals' reactions to her as her reactions to the animals.

She still nurses like a champ and eats 5 times a day, with her nightly bottle up to 9 ounces and occasionally a little extra nursing on top of that. It seems to have helped her settled back into a 11-12 hour sleep pattern!! She goes to sleep by 10:30 pm and sometimes wakes up to play by herself in her crib between 8:30-9 am, but then goes back to sleep until 10:30 when she eats. She is still sleeping swaddled at night, but we're transitioning her out of it by leaving one arm out during naptimes. We've found she frequently rolls over and grabs the bars of the crib when one arm is out though, so his mom bought a breathable liner that I just installed. She got so tuckered out waiting for me to finish that she just put her own pacifier in and went to sleep, no swaddle at all. That's a win!
We need to start her on solids, so we have some rice cereal to try out, but I'm not going to lie - I really am not gung-ho on having her do solids anytime soon. It's so much easier to just nurse her or take a bottle, rather than have to prepare other foods for her. The doctor said she can eat a little of what we eat, mashed up of course, but something about putting bagels and pizza near her doesn't sound wise or healthy :/ I know she gets my diet anyways, but it sure seems different when it's straight up crap without my body filtering it!

Selah is such a delight and joy to us. Adrian's mom is in town and gave us a date night the other night and even though we thoroughly enjoyed and needed the time away as a couple, we both admitted we missed her after a couple hours. Not sure how WE'LL handle a long anniversary trip away this fall! Kidding. Kind of. Beaches and no schedule could make it worth the separation ;) We're so looking forward to all the little milestones yet to come, but we're truly loving this stage she's in right now. She is so fun and such a blessing to us all (except Ben. He's still scared of her).

Anyways, hopefully I'll be able to post about some other stuff going on in our life soon, other than just the joy of Selah!